Finding Bobby: Changeling
by planet p
Summary: Sequel to Finding Bobby: Book of Monsters and Geniuses. Finally, they are in the right order!
1. Chapter 1

**Finding Bobby: Changeling** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters. "Here in my room all alone…" comes from the song _Sunday 29th_ by Bent.

**Author's Note** AU. So, okay, I finally got around to posting the story to which this is a sequel, _Finding Bobby: Book of Monsters and Geniuses_. You can find it in my Profile, under my list of published stories, or look for it in the archive.

* * *

The woman sat away from the window, something in her hand. Sydney, though he could not see her face, decided to make his way over to her table. She had a small stature that he thought he recognised.

Drawing nearer the table, it became clear that he had been correct, and he took a seat opposite.

Kimble's chin shot up and Sydney frowned at the shine in her eyes. The object in her hands turned out to be a book which she now placed onto the tabletop.

Sydney reached across to touch her hand.

"Please don't," she said in a half whisper.

Sydney retracted his hand. "I'm sorry," he said. He thought that although he knew some of what she must be going through it wasn't the same, it never was. "How is it?" he asked, to take her mind off her sister, and nodded to the book.

Kimble dropped her dark eyes to the table and noticed the book. She shook her head. "I wasn't really paying attention," she said.

Sydney smiled sadly.

Sydney went later, to order them both drinks, a coffee for himself, and a Coke for Kimble. The girl serving the counter was nice enough, Sydney supposed, and pondered over the name tag for some moments; if perhaps by accident she had unknowingly switched name tags with a Corbin.

The girl's eyes came to rest momentarily on the tag pinned to her uniform and she smiled. "I'm Corbin," she said, extending a hand.

Sydney shook her hand. "Sydney," he said.

She nodded seriously, but still that smile, and it was more of a mock seriousness. Corbin stepped out from behind the counter, tray in hand, and Sydney frowned at the shortness of the uniform she wore. "It's no bother, sir," she said to him. "I like to stretch my legs."

Sydney nodded and walked with the girl to the table where Kimble was sitting in thought.

Corbin placed the drinks down and returned to the counter.

"Thank you," Sydney said to her as she departed.

"It was no problem. Enjoy your drinks now."

Sydney made to touch Kimble's hand in reassurance.

"Please, I don't like to be touched!" she shot, her voice unsteady.

He nodded respectfully, but he couldn't let this go. "Kimble, I want to help you, but you have to want to be helped too."

Kimble looked up and stared into his eyes for a moment. She turned her face away, holding her chin up.

"I am so sorry about your sister," Sydney told her, "but what you're doing is helping neither of you." Sydney forced himself to be patient; if he was not, he was not helping anyone. He frowned suddenly at the woman who had come up behind Kimble, and now, her arms around her, holding her. The woman who might have been her carbon copy.

A man held the woman's hand. Sydney supposed that he might be Arabic or of Arabic descent, mostly this was by his features.

Kimble stood swiftly and hugged her sister.

The man patted her back.

"And who?" Kimble's sister asked.

"This is Sydney," Kimble replied, not looking at Sydney.

The man stepped forward, offered his hand. "Mal," he said, with his accent.

Sydney took his hand. "I'm not quite sure I understand?" Sydney said.

Mal nodded. "It is expected," he said.

"Kimberly," Kimble's sister said.

"I was afraid," Kimble told her. "It was so hard to feel you."

"Sh-sh-sh. I am here now."

Mal frowned, watching the two sisters.

"I am Jazmin," Kimble's sister told Sydney, and returned her attention back to her sister. "What troubles you, Kimberly?"

Kimble looked up into her sister's face.

"It is well, sister," Jazmin said. She held her sister tight, struggling as she was. "It is well," she repeated.

Mal nodded silently.

Jazmin finally let the younger free and Mal came to hold her.

"I see I am mistaken," Sydney tried again.

Jazmin strode up to him and frowned. "What is it that my sister has been telling you?" she asked.

Sydney produced a photograph and handed it to the woman, who frowned.

"Sister?" she said.

Mal shook his head. Leave her be, he said silently.

"You will have to tell me," Jazmin said to Sydney.

"This woman in the picture-"

"Kimberly, yes," Jazmin interrupted.

"No," Sydney said, and Jazmin frowned. "This woman in the picture," Sydney pressed. "She is dead."

Jazmin sighed. "Tell me of this?"

"They were married," Sydney said, "and she is dead."

"What is her name?"

"Shei-Lee."

"No, I do not understand," she said.

"You were not married?" Sydney asked.

Jazmin laughed.

"Nor Kimble?"

"She most certainly was not," Jazmin told him.

"This is what I had come to believe."

"The boy is a compulsive liar. Never anything truthful," she said quite casually.

"Lyle?" Sydney said.

It suddenly seemed as though he had said something to alarm her.

"Lyle?" Sydney said again, pointing to the picture.

Jazmin turned to her sister, who would not let go of Mal.

Jazmin turned back to Sydney. "If this is what you say. Lyle."

"Yes," Sydney replied. He thought. "Do you have children? A child?"

Jazmin nodded. "Yes, a bratty child, but a sister they call it."

Sydney frowned.

"Not a child," Jazmin said.

"Alright."

"What is child's name?"

"Sloane," Sydney said. "A girl."

Jazmin nodded. "I do not know of this child."

"Can you tell me about the picture?" Sydney said.

Jazmin nodded. "No."

Kimble finally stepped away from Mal.

Jazmin placed her small hands on her equally small hips.

"That is me," Kimble said, of the woman in the picture.

Jazmin shook her head.

"He was my friend," Kimble said, defiantly, as though somehow she might not be believed.

Jazmin sighed. "We almost grew up together," she said.

"We are alike, you see." That from Mal, stepping up behind Jazmin.

Jazmin nodded. "We are," she said.

Sydney frowned.

"We are what you call… Empathic," Jazmin explained.

Sydney took a breath. And so Raines had been right, never the truth.

xoxo

Parker stood there for some moments. She couldn't think about it. She stepped forward and the automatic doors slid open efficiently.

Reagan sat on his own. Parker peered across the room. He did not look up at her approach.

"Baby brother?" she said.

Reagan did not respond.

Parker frowned painfully. She sat carefully beside him and watched him for a long moment before reaching out to touch his arm.

He screamed. Parker reeled back. The screaming did not stop. All she could hear was the screaming, and then people running. Merchant and Angelo. It was Timothy now, she thought distantly.

Reagan started to struggle, screaming so much.

Parker wanted to hold him. She moved forward but was stopped by Timothy. He put a hand out. No closer, please. Someone was holding her from behind. Parker couldn't take her eyes from the screaming child. He didn't trust her. She stood there, even when they had taken him away.

A woman's voice soothed an unknown song. "Here in my room all alone…" The words forgotten or unknown, she continued in a hum.

She had small hands, Parker thought absently, as though separated from her body. She turned slowly. She needed to tell this woman that she was alright.

The woman stood back from her, perhaps uncertain.

Parker did not scream. She said nothing. This woman was dead.

The woman had dropped her head, red hair cascading across her face.

Parker pushed her arm up, hand pushed back and palm flat.

The woman raised her own hand slowly, her movement oddly disjointed. She touched Parker's hand with her own and she felt warm.

"Miss Parker?"

The woman shifted, disappeared.

Parker's eyes focused on the voice. Sydney's brown eyes peered back into her own blue ones.

"Syd," she said tiredly.

Sydney moved quickly so that he stood in front of her.

"I'm fine," she told him, not bothering to drag her voice up out of its tiredness.

"Did you know?" Sydney asked.

Parker looked into his eyes.

"Did you know that Lyle was an Empath?" Sydney pressed.

Parker looked away. "I suspected as much," she said after some moments.

Sydney did not try to meet her gaze and looked away himself.

They walked out of Commons together.

xoxo

Jarod looked across to Ethan.

Ethan did not speak, still.

"Ethan?" Jarod asked.

Ethan turned his head away. He stood quickly, efficiently.

"Are you-?"

Ethan interrupted him. "I don't know. I don't know what to feel."

xoxo

Parker sat in her office. The baby was at home, with a sitter. She couldn't be with him right now, but soon. She kept telling herself, soon.

She needed to know. Who his father was. She had named him Bobby, after the brother she had never known.

She shifted through the file that sat on her desk until she came to what she had been looking for. The blonde woman was smiling. Parker had never trusted that smile. She chose another of the photographs. Her father was in this one. It was his wedding. Brigitte had dyed her hair dark. The colour didn't suit her complexion. She looked somehow sickly, like little girls in fairytales.

Parker chose one of the blonde pictures and shut the file, replaced it in her filing cabinet.

"What do you want?" she asked the photograph Brigitte. A discordant movement caught her eye and she lifted her face.

The red-haired Brigitte stabilized, but did not look up from her bare feet. Her feet were grubby, brushed with soil, her hair lank, beads of water dropping like pearls to the floor.

The image shifted again and Brigitte was clean and dry.

"What do you want?" Parker said levelly, her voice cold.

Brigitte lifted her chin and their eyes met, green with blue. "I wanted to see you," Brigitte's voice said, somehow far away and distorted, jumping at odd moments into clarity before jumping back into obscurity. Her voice found a constant and remained there. It sounded different somehow. "I thought… I was mistaken." She turned from Parker.

Parker jumped up, threw her hand out to catch Brigitte's arm.

Brigitte was pulled back around. Parker stared.

Brigitte watched her.

"I can touch you?" Parker said, disbelieving.

Brigitte did not speak.

"You- You're doing this?"

"I wanted to see you," Brigitte said again, emotionless.

"How- I don't understand. How are you- _Doing this_?" Parker finished lamely.

"You appear well," Brigitte said.

"No!" Parker shouted, and then could not place the reason why. "Did-? Did-?" she began. "Did he see you too?"

Brigitte watched her.

"Did Lyle see you?"

Brigitte threw her head back as though to laugh, but none came. She dropped her face. "Yes," she said.

Parker tried to take this in. She had never heard of an Empath who actually saw dead people, saw them as they were, not just as they had been.

Brigitte turned to go.

"There are others?" Parker said to her back.

Brigitte did not turn. "Yes," she said again.

But not her, not Catherine, Parker thought. When Brigitte was gone, she sat down on the floor and cried.

xoxo

_Catherine laughed. Really laughed. "Run," Catherine shouted, standing on her toes momentarily._

_The little girl beside her smiled uncertainly._

_Catherine planted her hands on her hips._

"'_S gone," William told her, out of breath._

"_Race you!" Catherine yelled and pelted forward._

_William put a hand on his head, turned on the spot. "Show off!" he called, holding out his hand for the little girl to take. "Hey, you," he said to the child._

_Mel smiled. "Hey, you," she said back._

_Catherine screamed, came sprinting back, running and jumping._

_William looked at Mel. Mel looked at him._

_Catherine stopped in front of the pair, boomerang in hand, and red in the face._

_Mel smiled, a little scared._

_Catherine stuck the boomerang out in front of her._

"_Thanks, momma," Mel said, taking her boomerang._

_William heaved the kid up into his arms. "What's that?" he said, nodding across the showground._

"_That's a Ferris Wheel," Catherine supplied._

"_The kid's got her heart set on it," William said._

"_Please, momma!" Mel chimed. "I'm not scared. I swear I'm not!"_

_Catherine stared at the Ferris Wheel, going round, going round. She frowned, turned back to the two. "Yeah," she said, and grinned._

xoxo

She took Bobby on the Ferris Wheel. He was just a baby, so he didn't understand that he should be scared of the height, held safely in his mother's arms. Parker stared at nothing.

She bought a hot coffee in a paper cup out of a hot food stand, van sort of thing, and set it down to cool. Bobby slept. When they were this little, it was expected, they liked to sleep.

She wanted to be a mother to him, she wanted to be what he needed, but something held her back.

* * *

_Four years later_

Parker sat numbly. A man was talking at her. She heard none of it.

This was, as it were, the first instance of any such behaviours, any such indicators. It would be presumptuous to diagnose this early. Further tests were needed, more time.

xoxo

Parker pressed a button to end the call and walked the few steps to the bathroom where Bobby would be brushing his teeth. She stopped in the door. She pressed a number into the phone. They would be needing those tests now.

xoxo

Sydney handed the four-year-old a peach and looked up to meet Parker's gaze.

"What am I supposed to do with _that_?" Parker asked, tired and stressed.

Sydney wanted to tell her that that was not that, that was her child. He said no such thing. He moved around the expensive wooden table and sighed.

xoxo

Sydney could not help thinking that this now would only cause to distance her further from her child.

He had never worked with an epileptic but he imagined that it was not a happy condition.

xoxo

Sydney was dialling the number before he realised that that would not work. He had heard that he had been sent for re-conditioning. He did not trust such rumours.

He sighed.

xoxo

Ethan watched the child. Parker said nothing now. He thought that perhaps he should have kept his mouth shut, shouldn't have asked her that. The father thing. She did not know, of course. "Can I talk to him?" he said.

Parker let her breath out, exasperated. She stood. "Take your best shot. He's mute."

Ethan shot her a look.

She didn't stop. She kept walking.

Ethan turned, annoyed.

The child sat and stared emptily, stuffed kangaroo held in his little hands.

"My name is Ethan," Ethan said awkwardly.

The child turned his head away, still not looking at Ethan.

Ethan looked away also. Parker sat with a coffee. She was talking with a man. Ethan refrained from yelling.

"Hey, who's this?"

Ethan swore. "Shit, Jarod!"

Jarod got a look that could have been hurt, then he noticed Parker, then he saw the kid. He eyed Ethan.

"His name is Bobby."

Jarod hadn't heard this.

"He's four."

Jarod caught Ethan's gaze. "Bobby?" he said.

Ethan shrugged.

"Jarod."

The two men turned, stared at the child.

Jarod watched the child who was looking somewhere behind him. "What is he, some sort of retard?"

Ethan shot him a nasty look. "He's a bloody kid!" he growled.

Bobby yowled.

Jarod did not look convinced. He extended a hand. "Bobby, huh? Well Bobby, I'm Jarod."

Bobby screamed.

Jarod stepped forward.

Parker flew past him and pulled the child into her arms. She treated Ethan to a glare. Bobby wasn't calming down.

Ethan watched the child crying.

"Stop it now," Parker told the child.

Ethan frowned.

"You're hurting people's ears. Stop now."

Parker shoved the child away from her, dropped him onto the chair.

Jarod watched her leave. He moved forward and picked the child up. "She's sure mad, huh?" His gaze caught on the shine and his eyes quickly spotted the bracelet. "What?" he said. He turned to Ethan. "What's the bracelet for?"

"He's epileptic."

Jarod frowned, looked back to the child. "Oh no!" he said.

Ethan crossed his arms. "He's not yours," he said.

Jarod got a look. He could tell that. Shit, what did it matter? He was a kid, like any other kid! His annoyed expression only got all the more annoyed. "What is she doing?" he demanded.

"She's working."

Jarod snorted.

"She thinks he might know something. About…" Ethan tilted his head, "you know…"

Jarod looked away, scowling.

xoxo

"He know anything?" Jarod shot.

Parker's expression turned angry.

"No?" Jarod deduced. "But you have your suspicions," he said, continuing.

Parker sat stiffly and ignored him. She gave Ethan a look. Ethan gave her a look back. "Give him to me!" Parker ground.

Jarod stared into her eyes and did not budge.

Parker stood angrily.

Jarod stood swiftly and passed the child, afraid she would try to tug him away from him.

"And the bloody stuffed thing. It cost enough!"

Ethan passed the kangaroo.

xoxo

Jarod did not talk to Ethan for a long time. Ethan supposed he was pissed over the whole kid thing and not telling him. The way he saw it, it wasn't his to tell. His sister worried him though. He had always thought… He just always thought that it would be different, thought that she would be different.

Jarod stood abruptly, arms folded, fed up. "She resents him!"

Ethan glared. What was it any of his business? What was he to do about it? He stormed to the door and slammed it on his way out.

He stood in the bitter night air and hated the whole world.

xoxo

Later, in a diner, he punched a number into his cell phone and waited.

"You have reached Dr. Cox," a recorded message informed him. "If you are hearing this message then I am unable to take your call at this moment. Leave a message after the tone and- You know the drill." The message was cut abruptly and a horrible tone hurt Ethan's ear. He ended the call.

He tried another number.

"Michelle."

"11 o'clock, _Island o' Fruit_."

"Who is this?" Michelle asked.

Ethan didn't expect her to recognise his voice. She had never met him before. But he knew enough to make her world a hell of a lot frostier, a hell of a lot harder, if that need arose. "Be there tomorrow," he told her.

"No, I-"

He cut the call.

xoxo

_Island o' Fruit_ was a juice bar. Ethan couldn't say that he had been before. Actually, he generally avoided Blue Cove as a rule.

Ethan swiped a free directory on his way into the shopping complex. The juice bar was listed on the directory along with several other poky stores that made up the food court, though, as he found out, the juice bar was not actually a part of the food court.

It was situated beside a bookstore, but the view from its large glass front was pretty much all food court.

Ethan took a seat by the back wall, painted a horribly bright green-blue. The tables were all small and round and equally as annoying with their tiny fake plastic palm tree umbrellas. Ethan sat and waited.

xoxo

Michelle was the one with the animal print skirt. Her gaze swept the room, pausing to consider Ethan, and he nodded shortly.

Her hair was dyed artificially red, a shade of maroon, and Ethan wondered for a moment what her natural colour had been.

"Ethan, I presume," she said, having taken a seat, her gaze levelled with his.

Ethan kept his surprise to himself, though he hadn't thought she would have known him. She might have seen a picture, he supposed.

Michelle picked up the menu and turned it around, scanning down the drinks, vegetable salads and fruit salads, and various other available items.

"You worked for Raines," Ethan abruptly cut the near silence. There were always the other sounds.

Michelle replaced the menu and lifted her chin to meet his gaze. "Yes," she said. She sighed. "A lot of us did."

Ethan smiled, in no way friendly.

"He _was_ Med Space Director, honey," Michelle told him.

Ethan winced at the patronising endearment. "As his assistant!" he scowled horribly.

"Lab tech," Michelle corrected. "But yes, essentially, I worked as his assistant."

Ethan shook his head.

"I can see you think you know something, but you know nothing. What you know is nothing." Michelle did not take her eyes from his own. "Sticks and stones. A petty man's war. Little boy."

Ethan laughed. "And what if I told Sydney? What if I told Sydney what you really are? What you really were?"

Michelle smiled sedately. "You know nothing of what I am," she said simply.

"I know that you are no psychologist," Ethan told her in a stone cold voice. "I know that you cheated, lied and stole wherever you could to perpetuate your little lie. I know that you were lovers."

Michelle's smile widened. "Ouch!" she shot, and the playfulness in her voice disgusted Ethan. She laughed in his face.

Ethan could not have imagined her this way, would not have.

"I tell myself, little boy, that there is a point to all of this." She pouted. "Some time today, little boy."

Ethan growled. "I ask myself," he shot, "if there is one person who would know: Who would this person be? And I answer myself: It would be you!"

"What do I know, little boy?" Michelle asked, pronouncing each word almost singularly.

"My mother-"

"Is dead, little boy," Michelle finished for him. "That is usually what happens when one is shot in the head from close range." She titled her head to a side. "Brain goes all mooshy inside. Oh dear."

Ethan leapt up from his chair.

Michelle was on her feet at the same time. She fixed a look of shock onto her face and took a careful step backward, one step. "It happened! It's done! She's dead!"

Ethan growled.

"Deal!" Michelle told him.

"Tell me who his father is?" Ethan demanded.

"What do I look like," Michelle laughed, "a freaking psychic!" She looked at him properly, as though they were just two people. "Whose father?"

Ethan stood there, wanting to be sick on her, or wanting to hit her; he couldn't decide which impulse was stronger.

Ethan shoved a photograph at her.

Michelle took the offering and glanced down at the little boy. "What is his name?" she asked after a moment.

"Bobby," Ethan growled.

Michelle lifted her chin. "I'm sorry, I haven't spoken to William since before Nicholas was born."

Ethan watched her for signs of a lie.

She sighed. "True story!" she chimed, laughing abruptly.

It was something Raines used to say, and it made Ethan frown.

"It's as though – though you've never met that person before in your life – you've always known them. As though – if souls exist, and we do have a soul – as though it is our souls that recognise one another. And even though we cannot comprehend that – not here, not now – we know that this is someone we are not going to feel ill with." Michelle sighed, perhaps annoyed with herself. "Bobby is a good name," she told him. "Easy to spell."

"Bobby was my half brother's name," Ethan said.

Michelle considered him. "The blue is darker, but he has his eyes."

xoxo

Ethan stood alone in the cemetery. Alone because though he stood before his mother's headstone, she was not there. She had been cremated. She had not shot herself. She had not arranged for herself to be shot. She had simply trusted the wrong man.

"My heart – what have you done?"

Ethan frowned to be hearing his mother's voice now, and in this place. "Why did you do it?" he asked aloud.

"Does it matter now?" Catherine's voice asked.

Ethan frowned, suddenly wary.

Catherine sighed. "There is a room. Deep inside. We can rest our feet. Won't you invite me in, my heart?"

Ethan's frown deepened.

"Knock, knock," Catherine said, tired.

"There is no room," he said firmly.

"There is an ocean inside, and a wall with a sign that says that pictures may be taken with the friendly staff."

"What?" Ethan shot. He remembered the ocean. He remembered the wall. He remembered the sign. He sat, suddenly tired. He closed his eyes and saw only blackness.

"How does it sing? How does the ocean sing, my heart?" Catherine asked.

Ethan listened. He listened hard. And then he heard it. He heard the ocean.

The sound came from a single deck cassette recorder. The cassette recorder sat neatly on a little table. The wall in front of him featured a large print of a photograph of the ocean, nothing but water. The floor below was boards. He turned and saw that the wall behind him was painted yellow, the yellow of the photograph of the boy and the girl, red words painted neatly just as they were in the picture. He scanned the wall and turned back to scan the rest of the room – but no door.

He started at the arms that had come around him, the head on his shoulder. The woman stood behind him. She stood like that for some moments, and then she stepped back, stepped away from him.

He turned quickly and saw that she was Catherine and she was smiling for him. "Hello, my heart!"

xoxo

Ethan frowned. He couldn't smile. He didn't understand.

"Won't you smile, my strange little worry box? Just once? Smile, my heart."

Ethan forced himself to smile, and Catherine frowned, but smiling still. Ethan reached out a hand to touch her face. There was no mark, nothing to say that she was not alive and well. "Why?"

"I loved him," Catherine answered truthfully. She smiled. "No, not in the way that you are thinking, my heart. But I did love him."

Ethan tried hard not to look upon her horribly.

"He saved my life," Catherine said. "Perhaps not that first time that we met, but so many times after."

Ethan had to laugh at this.

Catherine touched his face. "Be still, my heart. Here, in this room, would you disbelieve me?"

Ethan watched her. "He doesn't matter. He's just a memory. Look at me. I'm here. I'm standing right here. Trying to look into something that isn't just your eyes. Trying to get you to see that this is what's left. These are the pieces. Here. Right here. But they can't grow without love, without truth. I love you, but I need it now. I need the truth."

Catherine frowned. She turned sharply so that all he saw was her back. "It was all so long ago. And I am old."

Ethan smiled, as though she had just slapped him across the face.

Catherine walked to the wall and rested the side of her face against it, as though listening. "I don't have the answers, Ethan," she finally said. "I can't give you something I don't have."

Ethan shook his head, his eyes far too watery for his liking. He was older than that.

"I don't have them, baby," Catherine said, turning swiftly to face him, her eyes sad. And then, uncertainly. "I think she has them."

"Who?" Ethan asked.

Catherine stared at him, and then she just stared. "Me," she said.

xoxo

Ethan blinked.

Across the cemetery, someone had hiccupped.

Ethan turned slowly, as though having just woken, and saw that it was Parker and Bobby. He thought for a moment of running, but he was too tired.

Ethan watched the small child, the starchy new uniform, and realised that he must be in school. Bobby hiccupped again.

Parker paused, turned efficiently, eyes narrowing on the child.

Bobby looked at her.

"Grandma first, and then Sydney's," Parker said to Bobby. Bobby said nothing and Parker turned and resumed her walk.

xoxo

Ethan sat in the back with Bobby. Parker hadn't yelled, hadn't taken hold of him and shook and shook and shook as though he were an uncooperative genie. She had done none of those things. Instead she had invited him for a coffee.

Bobby stared at the glass, frowning. Ethan watched him for a moment.

The car pulled up in front of Sydney's apartment and Ethan watched Bobby jump out of the car and make his way across the pavement to Sydney's door where Parker was already waiting and Sydney opened the door some moments later.

Parker instructed Bobby hastily to behave and be on his best behaviour, and walked briskly back to the car.

Ethan said nothing.

xoxo

Ethan sat opposite Parker, a low table in between them, and explained about the room, and about Catherine's exclamation.

Parker listened with a frown. "It was a crush."

Ethan made a face.

"Stupid crush."

"Catherine had a crush on Raines?" Ethan asked, incredulous.

Parker brushed at her cheek absently, as though an insect had landed there, though none had. She nodded.

Ethan shook his head.

"He was this big important doctor."

Ethan laughed shortly, but didn't bother to correct his sister. Psychiatrist not doctor.

Parker took a breath. "She must have been unhappy or something," she said, turning her chin sharply from Ethan. "She used to… cut… herself. Her arms. And… wrists…"

Ethan gaped at his sister.

"Later, I even think she did it just so he – you know – would come and make it better."

Ethan shook his head. "Someone would have seen."

"No. No one saw. Nothing to see. He made it better. He always made it better. But she didn't stop. She was sick."

Ethan stood from the armchair. "No," he said slowly.

Parker leapt to her feet, away from him. "I know what I saw! And I'm not a liar."

Ethan reached out a hand for her, but again, she moved out of his reach.

"'I shot her!'" Parker screamed. "'She died!'"

"Who died?" Ethan asked softly, moving slowly toward his sister.

"Catherine!"

"Raines shot our mother!" Ethan told her.

Parker laughed, and laughed. "Who does that? Who does that sort of thing? Who records that? And leaves it to be found?"

"He didn't leave it to be found!" Ethan shot. "He thought he had destroyed it!"

Parker laughed again. "Nobody can hurt you when you're dead."

Ethan sniggered. "So it's a fake! She's not dead!" he joked sarcastically.

Parker fixed her eyes on him. "It's not fake. She's not dead."

Ethan shook his head. He couldn't believe this.

"He's a Healer, Ethan!" Parker yelled.

"I don't believe you!"

Parker stared at him, tears running down her face, wetting the carpet.

xoxo

"Lyle was an Empath. He saw dead people. But not her."

Ethan shook his head. "Empaths don't see dead people. They don't see spirits. They don't see souls. They _think_ they see echoes. They feel things. That's all."

Parker laughed. "You think that you know something about them because you hear dead people talking to you in your head? You don't know anything. He was a high level Empath. He was not Angelo!"

Ethan glowered.

"Angelo is a low level Empath."

"He's dead," Ethan shot. The way he heard it, psychics foretold their own death. "I guess that makes him some fucking psychic!"

Parker shook her head. She turned and stalked away. If she didn't leave, and leave now, she was going to hit him. Right now, he was not her friend.

xoxo

Ethan found her crying in the laundry. Perplexed as he was as to why anyone would want to cry in a laundry, he sat down opposite her, frowning. "Go on. What's a Healer then?" he asked.

Parker did not answer him. She was pretending that she didn't know he was there, that she couldn't hear him or see him.

Ethan sighed.

Parker spoke as though she were on a cassette, reading out instructions. "The anomaly has a repertoire of expressions. One of those expressions happens to be the ability to Heal."

Ethan thought this through. "But it's the same anomaly."

"As far as anyone has been able to prove," Parker replied.

"And he Healed a bullet to the head?" Ethan proposed in as little as sarcastic a voice he could.

Parker glared at him by way of answer.

"He's dying," Ethan reminded her.

"Then he must want to die," Parker shot horribly. She stopped talking and tears welled in her eyes again.

Ethan watched Parker and realised that truth or not, Parker believed what she was saying. He had a moment to think this before Parker was on her feet, arms wrapped around her chest, and marched from the room.

xoxo

Sydney said nothing about Ethan being there when he opened the door. All he said was that Bobby was in the lounge room with Michelle, drawing.

Parker marched into the lounge room, Ethan behind her, and walked up to where Bobby was scribbling away at the coffee table, Michelle sitting on her legs beside him.

Michelle smiled when she saw Parker and stood, but Bobby got there first. He turned around and lifted his chin and said, "Do you want to see?"

Parker nodded and Bobby smiled and pushed a leaf of lined pad at her. It was all green except for two blobs which were black and a small blob which was red.

Parker frowned, confused, but Ethan said behind her, "It's a cemetery. There're two gravestones, and one of them has a red flower."

Parker looked up from the drawing, frowning.

Michelle walked out of the room.

"Bobby, why did you draw a cemetery?"

Bobby made a face and looked at Ethan, who dropped his eyes to the picture once more.

The second headstone read: CAT PARK. Ethan frowned. Cat Park? Catherine Parker? "Why has this person got a flower?" Ethan asked Bobby, moving around Parker, his finger on the first headstone, "but not this person?"

Bobby looked at him. He looked at the picture. After a moment, he stretched out a hand. He was going to draw another flower.

"No, Bobby, why did you give this person a flower, but not the other?"

Bobby took a deep breath, panicky.

"Bobby?" Ethan asked again. He said to Parker quietly, "This is Catherine's."

Parker frowned, her eyes flickering from Bobby to Ethan momentarily.

Bobby stared at the carpet, agitated.

"Bobby," Parker said finally. "Answer Ethan please."

Ethan took the drawing from Parker and walked the short distance to the coffee table, taking up a black crayon. "We'll just colour over this and then the flower will disappear," he said.

Parker stared at him, pained.

Bobby spun around and dived at the crayon Ethan was holding. "No! You not allowed take things away other people gives."

Parker stepped forward and took the drawing away from both of them. She looked down at Bobby and said. "Who did you give the flower to, Bobby?"

Bobby rubbed at his face, his eyes filling with water, but he said nothing.

Parker shook her head shortly and turned on her heel. She scrunched the drawing into a ball as she was walking and dropped it into the waste basket.

Bobby yowled. "It was special for Daddy!" he shouted. He stood perfectly still for a moment, and then he ran out of the room.

Parker bent slowly and lifted the drawing out of the waste basket, straightening it out again. She stared at the headstone with the flower, picturing in her mind the cemetery where she visited her mother with Bobby.

Ethan came up behind her. "Who's grave is that?" he asked.

Parker did not turn. "Thomas's," she said.

xoxo

"Mom," a man said from the door, Parker and Ethan and Sydney and Michelle all seated silently. "There's this… thing… in my room. What should I do about it? It looked sad so I gave it a mint. It, ah, it won't explode, will it?"

Michelle frowned and Nicholas, Sydney and Michelle's son, stepped into the room.

"Er, hi," he said to the rest of them.

"The thing's name is Bobby, and he's a little boy," Michelle told him.

Nicholas shrugged, and then he said. "Oh, right, Parker's son."

Parker nodded from where she was seated on the sofa.

"So what did you all say to it?" Nicholas asked. "Or just one of you?"

Sydney frowned.

Michelle said, "Go upstairs and make sure he's okay."

Nicholas grumbled and left the room, mumbling under his breath. "Sir, yes, sir!"

Michelle shook her head.

xoxo

"Perhaps he also possesses the Inner Sense," Sydney suggested to the awkward silence.

Michelle frowned. "No," she said.

Ethan glared at her. He did not trust her one bit, and if anyone asked, he would attest to as much.

Sydney looked at Michelle strangely, as though not quite sure that he was seeing Michelle, but perhaps something else.

Before any of them could speak, Bobby came shooting into the room and threw himself into Michelle's lap. Michelle smoothed his hair absently. "What is it?" she asked.

Bobby shook his head violently and refused to speak.

Parker stood swiftly, annoyed, and walked to where Michelle sat with Bobby. It was time for her to take her son home.

Michelle wrapped her arms around Bobby and glared. "Leave him alone!" she said loudly, and Parker stood there, partly in shock.

Michelle stood and turned her back to Parker, Bobby still in her arms. She began moving around the room, switching this on and that on. Sydney stood to block her way but she stepped around him to switch the television set on.

"Michelle!" Sydney said angrily and was ignored.

"I'll make them go away," Michelle told Bobby reassuringly.

Sydney took hold of Michelle's arm. "Put him down," he told her firmly.

Michelle frowned, and pulled her arm free. She switched the radio on, and a lamp.

Parker was still standing where she had been moments before, but Ethan had gotten to his feet and now stood in Michelle's way. "Let him go!" Ethan growled.

Michelle ignored him, as she had done Sydney, but Ethan wasn't having any of it. He took hold of the little boy and yanked.

xoxo

Bobby did not so much as yowl, but the room was suddenly fuller than before.

Five young women stood huddled together, all of them Asian. One of the women stepped forward, seemingly uninterested in anyone but Bobby. The woman was intercepted by a redhead Ethan recognised irrationally as Brigitte. "What do you think you're doing?" she shot.

"He can see us," the Asian woman said.

Brigitte glared at her.

"Bobby, just tell us where Lyle is. And then we'll leave, we promise."

There was a mixed chorus of nods and murmurs of agreement from the four women standing behind the first woman who had spoken.

"Lyle doesn't live here anymore," Brigitte told the woman coldly.

The woman looked at her, unconvinced.

"He's dead!" Brigitte yelled.

The woman took several steps back, and the four behind her rushed forward so that they were all huddled together again. "Will you help us?" one of them asked.

Brigitte laughed. "In case you haven't noticed – I'm stinking dead too!"

The first woman frowned. "You must know someone. You must know of others."

Brigitte glared. "I thought I told you to leave, the lot of you!"

"No."

Brigitte took the first woman by the arm, and the other four streamed around her, gliding toward Bobby. Brigitte managed to grab hold of one other of the women, but she could only hold two.

An eighteen-year-old boy materialised by her side, turning a contemplative frown on the struggling three.

Brigitte struck out a leg and kicked him in the shin. "Get the others you halfwit!"

Jimmy shot her a filthy glare and strolled in the general direction of Bobby and Michelle. "Ladies, ladies, ladies…" he began.

The three women paused in their pawing and patting. One of them growled. She lunged at Jimmy and knocked him to the ground.

Ethan, breaking free of his stunned trance, started toward the two still huddled around Bobby. He reached out a hand and touched one of the women on the arm. The second he touched her, the four others paused, and he hardly had time to register that she had felt real and whole, before they had disappeared.

Brigitte straightened efficiently and strode across the floor to where Jimmy was trying to breathe, yanked him to his feet, and scowled at him, before they too disappeared, Jimmy's protests falling away into nothing.

It was then that Ethan realised that it was not silent as he had perceived, but that Michelle had turned the volume on the radio up so that the loudness hurt his ears, but none of it loud enough for him not to hear Bobby crying.

"Please," he said to Michelle, and Michelle handed Bobby over.

xoxo

The car was horribly numb on the drive back to Parker's.

They ate pizza for dinner and Bobby fell asleep forty minutes into _Howl's Moving Castle_. Ethan said nothing to Parker about Brigitte or Jimmy or the Asian women. He really didn't know what he should say. He ate little, feeling a little ill. He needed to say something, but it didn't feel right. He didn't know what Parker would do then? What if she decided that she would no longer have Bobby?

He fell asleep thinking about these things. He dreamt he stood in a cobble street, with high walls either side, the walls painted with animated images of a city.

Footsteps echoed loudly on the cobble and Brigitte strolled around a corner ahead, dressed in a yellow dress with white trim frills, high boots, and a fancy hat. Ethan almost laughed. Brigitte made a face at him. She did not think it funny at all, in fact. "Bobby let you see, didn't he?"

Ethan said nothing, but Brigitte nodded to herself.

"He trusts you more than you think," she told him. "I think he likes you."

Ethan glowered now.

Brigitte was joined by Jimmy, dressed in that same style of costume, and then Kyle, and Thomas.

Ethan stared at them all.

Kyle made a face at seeing Jimmy present and leant close to Thomas to mutter something to him, and Thomas grinned.

Jimmy frowned, turning momentarily, and Kyle jammed his hands into his pockets innocently.

Kyle squinted momentarily, and then he said. "Hey, aren't you Mirage?"

Ethan stared at him.

Kyle burst into laughter before Brigitte pushed him in the arm and he fell silent, shooting her a nasty glare.

"I apologise, man," Kyle said in a gentler voice.

Ethan said nothing, but met his eyes all the same, as if to say, okay. "Who were those women?" he said to Brigitte.

Brigitte pouted. "Never met them before in my life!" She sniggered to herself. Life or death actually.

Ethan glowered. She was doing a very good job of irritating him right now.

"Dead chics," Kyle said. "I mean, I guess."

Thomas nodded his agreement. He shot a glance Brigitte's way, and Ethan took by that that they had both received a blasting for not materialising to help.

"Why are you here?" Ethan growled.

"We're not here," Brigitte said. "You're dreaming that we are. We're just figments of your imagination, really."

Ethan laughed, and pointed a finger, his arm pointed out straight the same way. "What about farmer boy!"

Jimmy glared. "Farmer-!" he fumed. Brigitte caught him by the back of his collar and stopped him from confronting Ethan. Jimmy growled and disappeared from sight right in front of Ethan.

Kyle sighed, relieved, and Brigitte glared at him nastily.

"I've come to ask that you be there for Bobby should he need you," Brigitte said. "He doesn't yet trust us," she went on, shooting a meaningful glare in Kyle's direction. "And you're not dead."

Ethan laughed. That was consoling.

"He's an Empath. It's a nasty thing to be, Ethan."

Ethan made an amused sound in his throat. Hearing voices in his head was a nasty thing to have too.

"I'm the strongest," Brigitte said. "So if you have any questions, you'll be wanting me."

"The strongest because you were dead longer, or because you are a woman?" Ethan asked. "Jimmy was dead longer than all of you, and Thomas died before you did."

"Subtle," Thomas remarked to Kyle in a lowered voice.

"And those Asian women must have died sometime between Jimmy and yourself," Ethan went on.

"Neither," Brigitte answered, ignoring the two at her rear. "I just am." She sighed. "It is time to go."

Ethan opened his mouth to say something, but he was alone.

* * *

TBC?


	2. Chapter 2

**Finding Bobby: Changeling** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

The room was dark but for the weak light coming through the large window facing onto the front garden outside. For a moment, the ghost did not move, but then a movement behind her – a movement in her own plane – caused her to turn.

"Why have you called me here?" the ghost of a small young woman with Asian features asked, her ghostly eyes moving quickly over the parts of the room she could see without having to turn her head.

"Something is not right," Brigitte told her, frowning. Could the other not feel it also?

Tazu made a face. What business was it of hers to interfere with the lives of ordinary living people? "Where are we?" she asked quickly, sensing that their location meant something. "What place is this?" And then her eyes fell upon a photograph in a frame, sitting neatly on the mantle above the fireplace. "The boy lives here?" she realised, her tone betraying her surprise. This was not the house she had been to before, before it had been an apartment, not even a house. "Why do you bring me to this place?" Tazu asked, her eyes narrowing on Brigitte.

Brigitte held a finger to her lips. "The boy might hear," she whispered.

"Why do you bring me here?" Tazu demanded.

"It is coming," Brigitte told her.

And now Tazu felt it too. A strange stirring between the planes, a rustling, pulling, as though a strange foreshadowing that whatever it was it would suck the life from all it came across, living or dead. And then the stirring stopped, like a wind that has died, and Tazu thought that the woman was merely the mother, but the feeling in her chest told her otherwise. "You must go!" she whispered urgently to Brigitte. "She must not have the child! Go! Get them out!"

The woman's eyes focussed through the gloom, and Tazu realised that she had arrived, fully arrived, and that they were alone together, that Brigitte had gone, and that she was scared. "Where is my grandson?" the woman asked, and she did not have the mother's voice, and all around her, Tazu felt something happening, something that could surely mean nothing good for her.

"I do not know," she told the woman.

The woman smiled, and the room was doused in icy, sharp, bright light that Tazu knew would not be visible to the mother's plane.

"I ask again," the woman spoke, her voice controlled, yet angry. "Where is my grandson?"

Tazu opened her mouth to reply again that she did not know, and saw in the blinding light, a gash across her hand where blood ran through her fingers, saw the way she must have looked when her body had been found, and then the pain came.

* * *

Parker blinked and a blurry face came into view. At first she thought she must have screamed, but then she realised that she had only sat up very fast.

"Hurry! We need to get out of this house!" Brigitte whispered urgently, and Parker wondered why it was she was whispering. "Where is Bobby's room?"

At the mention of her son's name, Parker shot to her feet. "Why do we need to get out of the house?" she demanded. "This is _our_ house! You are the one who needs to get out!"

"She is here…" Brigitte said, as though she could hear something that Parker could not, something that frightened her.

"Who is here?" Parker shot, incredulous, but she felt… something.

"She must not have him."

"Oh my God!" Parker ran for the door, and out into the hallway.

* * *

Bobby was sitting up in bed, rocking back and forth, when she burst into his bedroom and ran across the room.

For a moment, she thought about fighting, but then she realised that when she was dead, they would have him anyway.

She pulled him roughly into her arms and turned quickly to go back the way she had come.

* * *

Tazu was screaming, and the woman was smiling. She heard the sound of a car starting up and wondered if the woman had too. The mother, she realised, and knew what she must do. "He is dead!" she screamed, except that it didn't come out much like a scream at all, and she felt the planes shifting, and the white light became fire, and the house was going to burn down, and she was the witch in the middle, screaming but not because she was burning, except she was burning, and she stopped screaming, just as the woman had stopped smiling.

She reached out a hand, as though she thought if she could just touch her, then the woman would burn with her. But then she saw the red hair, and the arms that had come around the woman, the hair much longer than before, and the woman could not move at all.

* * *

The house had burned down to the ground. Parker could not believe it. This was not the Center's style. Nobody had been killed, there had been no bodies to conceal, so why burn the house down?

She was sure, if they had been intending to kill her, then she would certainly be dead!

She stood with Sydney and stared at what had once been her home.

* * *

_???_


	3. Chapter 3

**Finding Bobby: Changeling** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

At Sydney's, Bobby played a video game with Nicholas on the PlayStation console over the expensive flat screen television.

In the kitchen, at the kitchen table, Parker and Sydney looked through property listings in catalogues and newspapers for a new place for Parker and Bobby.

Michelle had gone out in the car to pay a bill.

* * *

Parker and Bobby stayed at a motel whilst they had no home to go to. Sometimes, they ate in the motel restaurant, or they ordered fast food over the telephone.

Bobby didn't have homework, yet, but he was given a weekly newsletter to take home. A couple of pages of pale blue paper, printed with a header on the first page, and stapled together with a single staple. Parker read the newsletter whilst Bobby watched television, and when she took her attention from the newsletter for a moment, to rest her eyes, she saw that he'd fallen asleep.

The newsletter told her that a Grade 6 student at Bobby's school was sick in hospital. It wasn't anything catching, though. She flipped to the back of the newsletter, a page of sporting results and coming events, and clubs to join, and a My Child Was Sick/Absent slip attached at the end, half a page in a colour that was a nasty concoction of yellow and green.

She sighed, and returned the newsletter to Bobby's schoolbag, and picked up the television remote control and flipped through the channels.

* * *

_Elsie sat with her knees drawn, back pressed against cold enamel, leant against the bathtub as tears coursed down her cheeks in an unstoppable tide, cigarette in hand. A hand came to rest half on her shoulder, half on her upper arm, and the haze lifted enough for her to recognise that it was Bobby. He was saying something to her. She recognised the words as being German and shook her head. That was her mother's language, not hers._

"_Why are you crying?"_

_Elsie sniffed loudly, took a puff of her cigarette, and came up blank. "I have no idea," she told the boy with streaming eyes, leaning forward into her knees as a fit of coughing took her. Her head hurt awfully and all she wanted right now was to lie down on the cold tile and sleep._

_Bobby watched the woman for a moment, unsure, rubbing her back in a soothing manner, and then he stood to go and get her a glass of water._

_Elsie grabbed for his hand and missed. "Don't go. I'll be lonely."_

_Bobby stopped at the door and turned back to his mother._

"_I'll be scared all on my own." She sniffed again and watched her son for his reaction._

"_I thought that you might like a glass of water," the boy told her._

_Elsie snickered in a hollow voice and smacked the floor to her left. "Come; sit beside a silly wretched old woman." Bobby obeyed and the woman leant her head on his shoulder. "Now tell your mother of this ridiculous notion. Why ever should you want to learn German?"_

"_Grandma Lorelei sometimes forgets how to say things in English. I thought it would be easier if I leant how to talk to her in her own language," Bobby explained._

_Elsie wasn't pleased. "You're being rather absurd, aren't you? English is Grandma Lorelei's language now. She knows that." Bobby frowned, so Elsie put her arm around his shoulder and shook him a bit. "I'm not mad at you, you silly thing. All I'm saying is, I just don't see the point in learning a language that you're never going to use. Everybody speaks English in America." She sighed heavily and took a drag of her cigarette._

_Bobby didn't think it of use to contest his mother at this point._

"_Oh, look at me!" Elsie exclaimed, fresh tears coming to her eyes. "Acting a right proper mope." She hadn't got the last syllable out before she was choked up by tears again. She shook her head miserably. "I'm so sorry," she apologised, "I never meant for things to be like this. I thought I could make a way for myself, something better than being stuck on that stupid farm."_

_Bobby turned to his mother and hugged her._

"_I was going to do such good things," she sobbed, her words muffled. She lifted her head out of his shoulder and met his eyes. "I'm sorry I've been such rotten company."_

"_I would have been rotten on my own anyway," Bobby told her quietly._

_Elsie shook her head, wiping her tears away on her hands, her make-up quite smudged now. "No, it isn't fair of me. I've not been a very good mother." She burst into tears and buried her head in his shoulder once more. Bobby might have been worried, but he didn't say so._

* * *

_Bobby had almost fallen asleep when he was woken by his mother shifting. The windows were no longer inky with darkness. Dusk was starting to lift outside and soon it would be day again._

_Elsie was by the open window with a freshly lit cigarette, watching the window with empty eyes. She wasn't watching any one thing in particular, her mind was pre-occupied in thought._

_Bobby got to his feet, horribly numb._

_Elsie startled at the movement and snorted. "Silly me, going on and opening the window at this hour as though I mean to freeze us all to death." She sniffed, sleeves drawn up over her hands, and pulled the window shut with a horrible scraping of wood. "I didn't mean to wake you. It's just that I've things on my mind. I'm a terrible mess this morning." She strolled to the mirror and scoffed. She didn't like what she saw. "Oh, Bobby, I'm sorry, there's so much still to do, and then with Bingo this afternoon and your father returning on Sunday." Dropping her cigarette into the sink, she wrenched open the cosmetic cabinet and set about fixing her make-up. Her mother had taught her the importance of appearance at a very early age and she meant to set a good example for her own son. A good woman was always presentable._

* * *

_Elsie brushed shadow on her eyelids with her finger and giggled, smearing eye shadow on Bobby's cheek as he was fixing her lipstick. "You, you're always fussing over me!"_

_Bobby looked up at her for a moment. He had never been a very talkative boy. Elsie had never been bothered by his shyness as a child, but now that he was older, she found herself a little unsure. She never knew what he was thinking._

"_What's on your mind?" she shot, teasing._

_Bobby ran a thumb across her bottom lip to even out her lipstick. "I was thinking how much more beautiful you are when you smile," he replied in a plain voice, finally looking up into her face as though, she imagined, in expectation of her response._

_Elsie laughed. "You're a funny sort, Robert Joseph Bowman!"_

_Bobby made no reply. Elsie wondered if he was not upset. He could get like that._

_Elsie leant forward and reached past the teenager for her cigarettes. Straightening up, she smiled and placed a quick kiss on his cheek. Retrieving her lighter from the half empty cigarette packet, she looked up and caught her son's frown, and swatted him on the shoulder, giving him a little wink. He looked away._

_Elsie watched the window for some time, her mind on Bingo. She imagined it would be quite as boring as it was every other week. She looked back when Bobby brushed her ear with the hairbrush, in mind of giving him a little jibing reprimand, and burst into giggles, pulling the sleeve of her cardigan up to wipe the eye shadow from his cheek._

_Bobby backed into the basin, watching her with caution, and she stumbled forward, lost in giggles._

"_You- you've got a little- on your-" Her words were lost to the giggles. She shook her head at her own silliness._

_Bobby wasn't taking his eyes off her and she wondered if she scared him._

"_You're such a silly boy," she told him emphatically, and then she laughed again. In between him watching her and she watching him, she stopped laughing in her head. She wanted him to hold her. No one ever held her anymore. She kissed him instead, it felt much better._

* * *

_She let her hands slip from his arms and took up his wrists, placing his hands around her middle. It felt so nice to have someone hold her that she almost forgot that Sunday previous, at church, she had prayed that she may die in her sleep._

_They sunk to the floor, her hands on the buttons of her cardigan. She giggled when he kissed her neck._

_His hands were cold on her skin as he brushed the cardigan off her shoulders, and they made her shiver. He dipped down and kissed her shoulder, tenderly sucking on her skin, and she forgot all about being cold or her sore back._

_Her breathing wasn't so steady as she gazed up at the ceiling, her hands pawing in the small of his back._

* * *

Parker was woken by her cell phone, its ring tone loud, as though it had already rung a couple of times. She reached for the cell phone and slid it open, holding it to her ear. "Miss Parker," she answered, gaining a sitting position.

* * *

Parker sprinted through the doors, into the Emergency waiting area. The receptionist was in, thankfully, and Parker headed toward the desk.

The receptionist pointed across the room to the corner, and when Parker turned, she could see Bobby sitting in one of the chairs, asleep.

In the seat beside him, a little girl, six or seven years of age, was staring at him, her father sitting beside her, reading an outdated outdoors magazine, with sections on fishing, boating and camping.

Parker turned away from the receptionist's desk and strode across the waiting room to the seat where Bobby was sitting.

"I think he came to see his Buddy from school, you know," the girl said, as Parker drew nearer, "but it's not visiting time, so I guess he decided to wait."

Parker glanced at the girl quickly, frowning.

"When you're in Prep, you get a Buddy who's in Grade 6," the girl explained, and Parker vaguely remembered reading something of the sort in an old newsletter of Bobby's. "Georgia is his Buddy," the girl finished. "She's sick." The girl looked away, toward the magazine her father was reading.

Parker bent over to shake Bobby awake. She was very angry with him for running away in the middle of the night like that, but she was also glad that he was alright, and that the hospital had called her to tell her where he was.

When he woke, Bobby blinked a few times, and then stared at her, as though confused. Maybe he expected to be back in the motel room, maybe he'd forgotten that he'd run away, but Parker hadn't.

Parker had just decided on her opening line, when Bobby took her hand. He was ready to go back to the motel now.

The girl looked around and saw that they were leaving and watched them for a moment, perhaps meaning to watch them out.

"Goodbye, Ida," Bobby said.

"Goodbye, Prep," the girl replied.

Parker clenched her jaw and marched out, holding Bobby's hand tightly.

* * *

Inside the car, nobody spoke, except for engine and the tyres on the road.

Back at the motel, Parker turned to Bobby, upset, and took his arm and pulled him away from the door so that she could close it behind them, then she turned back to him.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it," Bobby told her, trying not to cry. "I know it isn't mine. I didn't mean to take it. I'm sorry. I want to give it back…" He started crying, and dropped to the floor, drawing his knees up to his chest and curling up tightly.

Parker stared at him for a long moment, or maybe a minute, or two, confused, then she picked him up and put him to bed. He had school in the morning, he couldn't afford to be sleepy.

When she'd taken him to bed, she sat back down to watch television. She wouldn't be able to get to sleep if she lied down now, in any case, she was too wound up.

They would talk to Sydney tomorrow.

* * *

Bobby's teacher had told her how Bobby had drawn a wonderful picture for his Buddy, Georgia, at school during the day, when she'd come to his classroom to pick him up at the end of the day, and Parker thought about asking Bobby if she'd be able to see the picture before he sent it to Georgia, in hospital, and wondered if, maybe, he didn't have a little bit of a crush on the older girl.

She could remember, when she was around his age, liking boys, though they'd usually been the same age as her, and usually hadn't really wanted to be her friend because, at that age, boys and girls weren't allowed to be friends anymore.

After school, she drove around to Sydney's, noting that Nicholas wasn't yet home from work, and parked the car in front of Sydney's apartment, on the curb.

Bobby was sitting in the backseat, humming something to himself, which, when Parker got closer, she recognised as the song, _Build Me Up Buttercup_, and wondered if perhaps Bobby had heard it at school, or on the radio, or in a movie from the television. Certainly, she'd never have played that song; she just didn't like it.

Sydney came to the door to let them in, and Bobby said loudly, upset, "I'm sorry! Please don't make him go away!"

Sydney frowned at this, and Parker turned to Bobby with a frown of her own.

They went inside and Parker explained last night's incident to Sydney whilst Bobby was in the lounge room, watching television, and when they walked back into the lounge, they found him lying on the couch, staring up at the ceiling blankly.

"I didn't mean it," he said blankly. "I wanted to help, I guess. I just wanted to help. But he went away, like the other one." He turned his head and looked at Parker, standing with Sydney, staring at him. "I'm sorry. I just wanted to help."

"Who did you want to help, Bobby?" Sydney asked. "Who is it that went away?"

Bobby looked at Sydney, then back to Parker. "Miss Parker's baby," he said, calmly. "I wanted this one to live, but he went away, too. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stay." He frowned, then glanced at Miss Parker again. "I think I forgot, but I remember now. I'd give it back, but there isn't anyone…" He sat up and stared at the floor. "I didn't mean to."

Parker looked at Sydney, scared. She didn't know why Bobby was calling her Miss Parker, or why he was talking about the things he was talking about, or saying those things, but it scared her.

"I don't understand," Sydney said.

Bobby started rocking back and forth, staring at the carpet. "I died, Sydney," he said. "I died when that woman shot me. Matilda is her name. She shot me, and I died, and then she shot Miss Parker and her baby. I tried to help, but he wouldn't stay, and then, I think, maybe I had to stay, because there wasn't anyone else."

"Then?" Sydney began, smiling, as though he knew what must come next.

"Miss Parker is my sister," Bobby finished, and looked up at Parker. "I'm sorry," he told her.

Parker shook her head, glancing between Bobby and Sydney, then back to Bobby. She lurched forward abruptly and threw her arms around the little boy. "No, Bobby, you can't listen to the bad Voices!" she told him, hysterical. "You're my baby, and I'm your mommy, and nothing the Voices say can change that! Not ever, do you understand, Bobby! Not ever! I'm your mommy!" She started to cry, sitting beside Bobby on the couch and holding him tightly, then she began rocking them both as though to console him.

"I'm really very sorry, sis, I am," Bobby told her, and Parker let go of him, as though stung, and put her hands up to cover her ears.

* * *

Bobby's teacher gave the picture to Georgia's younger sister, Hann, to take with her to the hospital the next time she visited her older sister. It was a drawing of a field, filled with yellow flowers, and in the middle, a tiny paper crane, folded out of pink card.

Bobby was put on medication, but Parker couldn't stand the way he looked at her anymore, as though she'd stopped being his mother and suddenly become his sister. She'd thought Lyle was gone, but apparently he hadn't finished with her yet, he had to ruin her life and her son's life too, before he'd finally decide to move on.

The new house was quiet and cold, but there were enough heaters for that sort of cold, only, there wasn't a single heater that could fix the cold that was always with her, even on sunny days.

She'd sent Bobby away, to a place where he could be assisted to get better, but she knew that he would never get better, so she didn't visit, because that would be offering them both false hope, and she wanted to shoot false hope; she wanted to kill it so it was dead!

* * *

_Sorry for the lame ending! Thanks for reading._


End file.
